“If Santiago is the one trying to sweep Tenebris clean, we’re going to need to team up,” he goes on. “Show him he can’t just take our city.”
The other vampires cheer loudly.
The air shifts suddenly. Raleigh looks around.
Something’s wrong.
Everyone in the room freezes as the same knowing feeling overcomes us all.
Then glass explodes from above.
A shriek of shattering sound tears through the basement as the window bursts inward, raining shards. A dark shape sails through the opening, spinning end over end.
Raleigh dives. Lucian’s hand clamps around my wrist as we hit the ground, and the world erupts in chaos.
Light detonates across the room. Not just light—heat. Fire blooms on impact, racing across the floor in hungry orange tongues. Flames lick up the walls, swallowing shadows, devouring oxygen. Smoke surges thick and choking, the stench of burning alcohol clawing into my lungs.
A Molotov cocktail.
The realization slams into me as the fire spreads with terrifying speed. Someone threw it from outside. This had been the plan all along. Get us all in the same place to eliminate us.
“Elliot!” Lucian bellows beside me.
He hauls me back as the flames crawl closer, heat searing my calves. His eyes are a wild, glacial blue.
I see it then, the narrow row of windows near the ceiling. Street level. The point of entry.
Lucian follows my gaze. “Go. Get yourself out.”
The words don’t land at first. Then they do and my chest caves in.
The windows are barely wide enough for me to fit through. I could force myself out, scrape skin, maybe dislocate my shoulder to make it, but Lucian wouldn’t stand a chance.
“No,” I shout, grabbing his arm. Smoke burns my throat, my eyes. “I’m not leaving you.”
Fire roars behind us, greedy and closing in, and for the first time since I met him, Lucian looks at me like he’s afraid. But not of the flames.
Of losing me.
And I feel it too. That bone-deep fear like when I’d discovered de Santis’s trap for him, and again when the gun fired with a bullet meant for Lucian. I’d felt it then the same way I feel it now. Like something vital is tearing loose inside me.
“Go!” Even as he’s yelling it, his grip is iron on me.
But I can’t leave him behind. I can’t.
I don’t want to live forever if it means it’ll be an eternity without him.
The heat swallows the room, stealing breath and hope in the same cruel pull.
Pulling me close, Lucian’s arms lock around me as the flames roar closer. I bury my face against his chest, breathing him in, trying to focus on the soft thumping of his heart.
His mouth brushes my ear, and I feel the unspoken words sinking deep into my soul.
With death closing in around us, there’s no reason left to deny it—not to him, not to myself.
I…I love you, Lucy.
And then—Hell on earth.
